Bean Spotting – Giant-Size Mini Comics #1 [1986]

Giant-Size Mini Comics #1 [1986]

By Mike Bannon

Larry Marder edited this first issue of a sampler of some of the small-press books of the mid-1980s, and drew several pages himself, but those will be covered in another post. For the Bean Spotter this issue, there’s a one-page story called “Tales of the KidneyBeanworld” by Mike Bannon, with a take off on the familiar TotB logo, plus some unusually creepy large and hungry versions of the Beans (with mouths, no less). Weird stuff.

Mike Bannon is best known as the artist for TO BE ANNOUNCED and OOMBAH for Strawberry Jam Comics, some very funny stuff, well worth tracking down.

Marder-ography – Scout #17 [1987]

Scout #17 [1987]
3-page Beanworld cameo by Tim Truman and Larry Marder

Among my favourite Beanworld guest shots is this issue of Tim Truman’s SCOUT series, also published by Eclipse. In this three page sequence, Scout is attempting a healing ceremony and encounters a monster. Suddenly, Mr. Spook and about a hundred Chow Sol’jers emerge from Scout’s gun and shows the monster how things are done the Beanworld way.

Mr. Spook then explains to Scout that his “singing travelled all the way to the Beanworld and carried us here”, and gives him a lesson on the importance of balance and harmony and urges him to “be a carrier of hope, and, perhaps, of life” as the Beans return home through Scout’s gun.

A great little sequence, absolutely true to both SCOUT and BEANWORLD mythologies and combining the two very different art styles seamlessly. Great stuff.

Tim Truman continues to do great work in comics, currently working on GRIMJACK with John Ostrander and writing CONAN, among other projects. The first SCOUT storyline (#1 to #7) was recently reprinted, so this storyline might see print again (probably in a hypothetical third book).

-Link- Marder talks the dayjob

Ah, near to break your heart, it does. A massive three part interview with Marder from a few years back, talking about the toy production. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he seems to enjoy the goofy service that pays the bills, but I can’t help but see each answer as a minute he’s not drawing comics…

Bean Spotting – Zot #31 [1990]

Zot #31 [1990]
by Scott McCloud

Oddly enough, this was the first issue of ZOT that I read, and I got it shortly after discovering BEANWORLD and partly picked it up on the strength of the positive mentions of the book that I’d seen in BEANWORLD, as well as Scott McCloud’s introduction to the first BEANWOLD collection. So you can imagine my amusement when seven pages in the character featured this issue, Ronnie, mentions taking his girlfriend to a comic shop to get her BATMAN: YEAR ONE (admittedly a very well drawn comic) and how she almost bought an issue of “that cartoony Bean thing”. Complete with a panel of said girlfriend, Brandy, reading a comic that if you look real close has a scene of Beanish talking to Dreamishness. Now that’s attention to detail.

It’s also a very good comic overall, though probably not the best introduction to the world of Zot, since he barely appears in the story at all, this being in the middle of the excellent “Earth Stories” series, each one spotlighting the normal life of one of the regular teens in the book. Still, it was good enough to get me to read more, and eventually get all 36 issues of the series.

As mentioned before, McCloud went on to big things, and is currently touring the known universe in support of his book MAKING COMICS.

Bean Spotting – Zot #21 [1988]

Zot #21 [1988] (and others)

ad by Rafael Kayanan

1988 was Eclipse’s 10th anniversary, and as part of marking that they had a series of “Ten Years of…” ads focusing on the various types of comics they had published. ZOT #21 (and presumably other books, but this is the one a Beanworld fan is most likely to have) had one of the ads on the back cover, “Ten Years of Personal Vision”, with art by Rafael Kayanan, with many of the creator-owned characters that Eclipse had published. Beanworld is represented front and centre with Mr. Spook, Beanish and a pair of regular Beans. Also included are Zot, Jenny and Dekko from ZOT, Cynical-Man, Reid Fleming and more.

And yes, there is something odd about celebrating the personal vision of these features by having another artist draw the characters. Welcome to the dichotomy that was Eclipse…

Bean Spotting – Amazing Heroes #185 [1990]

Amazing Heroes #185 [1990]
“The Cartoonist” by Teri S. Wood

Teri Wood, best known for her work on comics like WANDERING STAR and RHUDIPRRT, PRINCE OF FUR, did a regular humour strip based on current comics for AMAZING HEROES from 1989 to 1992 called “The Cartoonist”, featuring her (as an animated signature) interacting with a young woman named Silver and whatever comic characters she felt like poking fun at that issue. One of my favourite was from #185, when Silver was transformed into a Bean for a guest spot by Mr. Spook. She captures the look of her character transformed to Bean form perfectly, and makes a nice Beanworld-centric joke which is probably still funny to those who don’t know the series.

This strip and others were reprinted in the 1997 published THE CARTOONIST #1 from Sirius.

Bean Spotting – Total Eclipse #4 [1989]

Total Eclipse #4 [1989]
Cover by Bill Sienkiewicz

Beanish became a surprisingly crucial part of this crossover series of many of the characters published by Eclipse, and the events became an important part of Beanworld lore as well. Marder explains how this came about in the third collection of TALES OF THE BEANWORLD, which reprints the Beanworld half of the crossover. For the actual TOTAL ECLIPSE series, Marder drew the Beanworld related characters, so that’ll be covered elsewhere, but I don’t think he drew the one cover appearance that Beanish had, with Bill Sienkiewicz scattering about two dozen Beanish figures across the front of this painted image which includes MiracleMan and Aztec Ace. I have to say, he does a pretty good job with a number of the poses.

Bill Sienkiewicz was a decent but pretty standard super-hero artist over at Marvel in the early 1980s, with a style heavily influenced by Neal Adams, until he “broke out” and started using some innovative design and storytelling techniques, not always successfully but always interestingly, and was a popular cover artist at this time. Major works include STRAY TOASTERS, BIG NUMBERS (incomplete), BROUGHT TO LIGHT, MOBY DICK, ELEKTRA ASSASSIN, MOON KNIGHT and NEW MUTANTS.

-Link- Lowdown on Beanworld

Neil Figuracion writes about discovering Beanworld back in the 1980s as part of his Lowdown column on Broken Frontier.

Marder-ography – normalman #6 [1984]

normalman #6 [1984]
Letter column illustration by Larry Marder

Jim Valentino’s entertaining NORMALMAN series ran through some very clever parodies of all styles of comics back in the mid-1980s. Larry Marder shows up in the letter column of #6 with a great looking colour illustration that Valentino calls his favourite to date. Little did he know that he’d be hiring Marder to run his company less than a decade later.

It is a fun illustration (though the printing of the colour is a bit off-register). For those unfamiliar with normalman, it captures all the basics in Marder’s typical stripped down iconographic style, norm’s blond crew-cut, thick-rimmed glassed, red bowtie and plaid jacket.

Jim Valentino had a long and varied career since this, obviously best known as one of the founders of Image comics. I’m especially fond of some of his early auto-biographical work, and it’ll be interesting to see his return to that in the upcoming DRAWING FROM LIFE series.